from the this-makes-it-a-trend dept
Final week, we wrote in regards to the positively ridiculous lawsuit filed by the Seattle Public Faculty district in opposition to mainly all of social media claiming social media was “a public nuisance.” As we famous, the varsity district gave the impression to be losing taxpayer cash, that might have gone to educating their youngsters, on this lawsuit that screamed out to the general public that the varsity district had completely failed in educating their kids how one can be good digital residents, how one can use the web correctly, and how one can be ready for dwelling life within the age of the web.
And, now it seems that the Mesa, Arizona faculty district has decided to do the same thing. Utilizing the identical legal professionals. The legislation workplaces of Keller Rohrback seems to be making an attempt to carve out this nook of the market as their very own: having public faculty districts waste a shitload of time and sources to publicly proclaim that they will’t put together the kids they’re in control of educating for the trendy web world.
The Mesa complaint is, not surprisingly, much like the Seattle grievance. It’s suing the identical firms (actually: Meta, Google, Snap, Tiktok). Just like the Seattle grievance, it argues that social media is a “public nuisance.” Just like the Seattle grievance, it says that Part 230 doesn’t defend the businesses (it’s fallacious). Just like the Seattle grievance, it posts a couple of cherry-picked research claiming that social media is dangerous for youths, and ignores extra complete research that argue that reverse. Just like the Seattle grievance, it goes onerous in proving that Mesa public faculties apparently are staffed by directors and lecturers who suck at educating kids, and discover themselves powerless in opposition to… leisure.
In brief, it’s pathetic.
The one major “distinction” between the Seattle grievance and the Mesa one is that in Mesa they’ve added a “negligence” declare, saying that social media firms “owe” the varsity district “an obligation to not expose Plaintiff to an unreasonable danger of hurt….”
That is all laughably silly, and by no means how the legislation works. I imply, it’s attainable that the legal professionals at Keller Rohrback determine that in the event that they file sufficient of those lawsuits, ultimately they’ll discover a choose who lets the ethical panic of “social media is dangerous for youths” overwhelm the precise authorized points, but it surely’s tough to see it standing as much as any official judicial scrutiny.
In fact, now that we’ve got these two lawsuits, it means it’s virtually sure that they’re looking for comparable lawsuits. One hopes that different faculty districts will reject this nonsense. The entire level of those lawsuits is nearly definitely to attempt to shake down the social media firms to get them to settle, however that appears unlikely.
Both manner, in the event you’re a mum or dad of a pupil within the Mesa public faculties, you need to be asking why your faculty’s directors appear to be publicly admitting that they will’t educate your kids how one can cope with the trendy web world.
Filed Beneath: mesa, public nuisance, school district, schools, social media
Firms: bytedance, facebook, google, instagram, keller rohrback, meta, snapchat, tiktok, youtube
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